SOCRATES: Only very vaguely. It is dark.
HERMES: So I ask again: is it true that, if you were awake, you could easily see what was before your eyes?
SOCRATES: All right – not always. But nevertheless, when I am awake, and with my eyes open, and in bright light –
HERMES: But not too bright, I suppose?
SOCRATES: Yes, yes. If you want to keep quibbling, I must accept that when one is dazzled by the sun one may see even less well than in the dark. Likewise one may see one’s own face behind a mirror where there is in reality only empty space. One may sometimes see a mirage, or be fooled by a pile of crumpled clothes that happens to resemble a mythical creature –
HERMES: Or one may be fooled by dreaming of one . . .
SOCRATES: [Smiles.] Quite so. And, conversely, whether sleeping or waking, we often fail to see things that are there in reality.
HERMES: You have no idea how many such things there are . . .
SOCRATES: No doubt. But still, when one is not dreaming, and conditions are good for seeing –
HERMES: And how can you tell whether ‘conditions are good’ for seeing?
SOCRATES: Ah! Now you are trying to catch me in a circularity. You want me to say that one can tell that conditions are good for seeing when one can easily see what is there.
HERMES: I want you not to say so.
SOCRATES: It seems to me that you have been asking questions about me – what is in front of me, what I can easily see, whether I am sure, and so on. But I seek fundamental truths, of which I estimate that not a single one is predominantly about me. So let me stress again: I am not sure what is in front of my eyes – ever – with my eyes open or closed, asleep or awake. Nor can I be sure what is probably in front of my eyes, for how could I estimate the probability that I am dreaming when I think I am awake? Or that my whole previous life has been but a dream in which it has pleased one of you immortals to imprison me?
HERMES: Indeed.
SOCRATES: I might even be a victim of a mundane deception, such as those of conjurers. We know that a conjurer is deceiving us because he shows us something that cannot be – and then asks for money! But if he were to forgo his fee and show me something that can be but is not, how could I ever know? Perhaps this entire vision of you is not a dream after all but some cunning conjurer’s trick. On the other hand, perhaps you really are here in person and I am awake after all. None of this can I ever be sure is so, or not so. I can, however, conceive of knowing some of it.
HERMES: Precisely. And is the same true of your moral knowledge? In regard to what is right and wrong, could you be mistaken, or misled, by the equivalent of mirages or tricks?
SOCRATES: That seems harder to imagine. For in regard to moral knowledge I need my senses very little: it is mainly just my own thoughts. I reason about what is right and wrong, or what makes a person virtuous or wicked. I can be mistaken, of course, in these mental deliberations, but not so easily deceived by outside tricks or illusions, for they affect only our senses and not our reason.
HERMES: How, then, do you account for the fact that you Athenians are constantly squabbling among yourselves about what qualities constitute virtue or vice, and what actions are right or wrong?
SOCRATES: Why is that puzzling? We disagree because it is easy to be mistaken. Yet, despite that, we also agree about many such issues.
From this I speculate that, where we have so far failed to agree, it is not because anything is actively deceiving us, but simply because some issues are hard to reason about – just as there are many truths in geometry that even Pythagoras did not know but which future geometers may discover. As that other ‘wise mortal’ Xenophanes wrote:
The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us; but in the course of time,
Through seeking we may learn and know things better.*
That is what we Athenians have done in regard to moral knowledge. Through seeking we have learned, and agreed upon, the easy things. And in future, by the same means – namely by refusing to hold any of our ideas immune from criticism – we may learn some matters not so light.
HERMES: There is much truth in what you say. So, take it a little further: if it is so hard to be systematically deceived on moral issues, how is it that the Spartans disagree with you about some of those issues on which nearly all Athenians agree – the ones that you have just said are the easy ones?
SOCRATES: Because the Spartans learn many mistaken beliefs and values in early childhood.
HERMES: Whereas Athenians begin their flawless education at what age?
SOCRATES: Again, you catch me in an error. Yes of course we too teach our values to our young, and those must include our most serious misconceptions as well as our deepest wisdom. Yet our values include being open to suggestions, tolerant of dissent, and critical of both dissent and received opinion. So I suppose that the real difference between the Spartans and us is that their moral education enjoins them to hold their most important ideas immune from criticism. Not to be open to suggestions. Not to criticize certain ideas such as their traditions or their conceptions of the gods; not to seek the truth, because they claim that they already have it.
Hence they do not believe that ‘in the course of time they may learn and know things better.’ They agree among themselves because their laws and customs enforce conformity. We agree among ourselves (to the extent that we do) because, through our tradition of endless critical debate, we have discovered some genuine knowledge. Since there is only one truth of any given matter, as we discover ideas closer to the truth our ideas become closer to each other’s, so we agree more. People who converge upon the truth converge with each other.
HERMES: Indeed.
SOCRATES: Moreover, since the Spartans never seek improvement, it is not surprising that they never find it. We, in contrast, have sought it – by constantly criticizing and debating and trying to correct our ideas and behaviour. And thereby we are well placed to learn more in the future.
HERMES: It follows, then, that it is wrong of the Spartans to educate their children to hold their city’s ideas, laws and customs immune from criticism.
SOCRATES: I thought you weren’t going to reveal moral truths!
HERMES: I can’t help it if it follows logically from epistemology. But, anyway, you already know this one.
SOCRATES: Yes, I do. And I see what you are getting at. You are showing me that there are such things as mirages and tricks in regard to moral knowledge. Some of them are embedded in the Spartans’ traditional moral choices. Their whole way of life misleads and traps them – because one of their mistaken beliefs is that they must take no steps to prevent their way of life from misleading and trapping them!
HERMES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Are there such traps embedded in our way of life? [Frowns.] Of course, I think there aren’t – but I would think that, wouldn’t I? As Xenophanes also wrote, it’s all too easy to attribute universal truth to mere local appearances:
The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw
And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle . . .
HERMES: So now you are imagining some Spartan Socrates who considers their ways virtuous and yours decadent –
SOCRATES: And who considers us to be stuck in a trap, since we shall never willingly ‘correct’ ourselves by adopting Spartan ways. Yes.
HERMES: But does this Spartan Socrates, if he exists, worry that the Athenian Socrates may be right, and he wrong? Was there a Spartan Xenophanes who suspected that the gods might not be as the Greeks think they are?
SOCRATES: Most certainly not!
HERMES: So, since one of their ‘ways’ is to preserve all their ways unchanged, then if he were right, and you wrong –
SO
CRATES: Then the Spartans must also have been right ever since they embarked on their present way of life. The gods must have revealed the perfect way of life to them at the outset. So – did you?
HERMES: [Raises his eyebrows.]
SOCRATES: Of course you didn’t. Now I see that the difference between our ways and theirs is not merely a matter of perspective, nor just a matter of degree.* Let me restate it:
If the Spartan Socrates is right that Athens is trapped in falsehoods but Sparta is not, then Sparta, being unchanging, must already be perfect, and hence right about everything else too. Yet in fact they know almost nothing. One thing that they clearly don’t know is how to persuade other cities that Sparta is perfect, even cities that have a policy of listening to arguments and criticism . . .
HERMES: Well, logically it could be that the ‘perfect way of life’ involves having few accomplishments and being wrong about most things. But, yes, you are glimpsing something important here –
SOCRATES: Whereas if I am right that Athens is not in such a trap, that implies nothing about whether we are right or wrong about any other matter. Indeed, our very idea that improvement is possible implies that there must be errors and inadequacies in our current ideas.
I thank you, generous Apollo, for this ‘glimpse’ into that important difference.
HERMES: Yet there is even more of a difference than you think. Bear in mind that the Spartans and Athenians alike are but fallible men and are subject to misconceptions and errors in all their thinking –
SOCRATES: Wait! We are fallible in all our thinking? Is there literally no idea that we may safely hold immune from criticism?
HERMES: Like what?
SOCRATES: [Ponders for a while. Then:] What about the truths of arithmetic, like two plus two equals four? Or the fact that Delphi exists? What about the geometrical fact that the angles of a triangle sum to two right angles?
HERMES: Revealing no facts, I cannot confirm that all three of those propositions are even true! But more important is this: how did you come to choose those particular propositions as candidates for immunity from criticism? Why Delphi and not Athens? Why two plus two and not three plus four? Why not the theorem of Pythagoras? Was it because you decided that the propositions you chose would best make your point because they were the most obviously, unambiguously true of all the propositions you considered using?
SOCRATES: Yes.
HERMES: But then how did you determine how obviously and unambiguously true each of those candidate propositions was, compared with the others? Did you not criticize them? Did you not quickly attempt to think of ways or reasons that they might conceivably be false?
SOCRATES: Yes, I did. I see. Had I held them immune from criticism, I would have had no way of arriving at that conclusion.
HERMES: So you are, after all, a thoroughgoing fallibilist – though you mistakenly believed you were not.
SOCRATES: I merely doubted it.
HERMES: You doubted and criticized fallibilism itself, as a true fallibilist should.
SOCRATES: That is so. Moreover, had I not criticized it, I could not have come to understand why it is true. My doubt improved my knowledge of an important truth – as knowledge held immune from criticism never can be improved!
HERMES: This too you already knew. For it is why you always encourage everyone to criticize even that which seems most obvious to you –
SOCRATES: And why I set an example by doing it to them!
HERMES: Perhaps. Now consider: what would happen if the fallible Athenian voters made a mistake and enacted a law that was very unwise and unjust –
SOCRATES: Which, alas, they often do –
HERMES: Imagine a specific case, for the sake of argument. Suppose that they were somehow firmly persuaded that thieving is a high virtue from which many practical benefits flow, and that they abolished all laws forbidding it. What would happen?
SOCRATES: Everyone would start thieving. Very soon those who were best at thieving (and at living among thieves) would become the wealthiest citizens. But most people would no longer be secure in their property (even most thieves), and all the farmers and artisans and traders would soon find it impossible to continue to produce anything worth stealing. So disaster and starvation would follow, while the promised benefits would not, and they would all realize that they had been mistaken.
HERMES: Would they? Let me remind you again of the fallibility of human nature, Socrates. Given that they were firmly persuaded that thievery was beneficial, wouldn’t their first reaction to those setbacks be that there was not enough thievery going on? Wouldn’t they enact laws to encourage it still further?
SOCRATES: Alas, yes – at first. Yet, no matter how firmly they were persuaded, these setbacks would be problems in their lives, which they would want to solve. A few among them would eventually begin to suspect that increased thievery might not be the solution after all. So they would think about it more. They would have been convinced of the benefits of thievery by some explanation or other. Now they would try to explain why the supposed solution didn’t seem to be working. Eventually they would find an explanation that seemed better. So gradually they would persuade others of that – and so on until a majority again opposed thievery.
HERMES: Aha! So salvation would come about through persuasion.
SOCRATES: If you like. Thought, explanation and persuasion. And now they would understand better why thievery is harmful, through their new explanations.*
HERMES: By the way, the little story we have just imagined is exactly how Athens really does look, from my point of view.
SOCRATES: [somewhat resentfully] How you must laugh at us!
HERMES: Not at all, Athenian. As I said, I honour you. Now, let us consider what would happen if, instead of legalizing thievery, their error had been to ban debate. And to ban philosophy and politics and elections and that whole constellation of activities, and to consider them shameful.
SOCRATES: I see. That would have the effect of banning persuasion. And hence it would block off that path to salvation that we have discussed. This is a rare and deadly sort of error: it prevents itself from being undone.
HERMES: Or at least it makes salvation immensely more difficult, yes. This is what Sparta looks like, to me.
SOCRATES: I see. And to me too, now that you point it out. In the past I have often pondered the many differences between our two cities, for I must confess that there was – and still is – much that I admire about the Spartans. But I had never realized before now that those differences are all superficial. Beneath their evident virtues and vices, beneath even the fact that they are bitter enemies of Athens, Sparta is the victim – and the servant – of a profound evil. This is a momentous revelation, noble Apollo, better than a thousand declarations of the Oracle, and I cannot adequately express my gratitude.
HERMES: [Nods in acknowledgement.]
SOCRATES: I also see why you urge me always to bear human fallibility in mind. In fact, since you mentioned that some moral truths follow logically from epistemological considerations, I am now wondering whether they all do. Could it be that the moral imperative not to destroy the means of correcting mistakes is the only moral imperative? That all other moral truths follow from it?
HERMES: [Is silent.]
SOCRATES: As you wish. Now, in regard to Athens, and to what you were saying about epistemology: if our prospects for discovering new knowledge are so good, why were you stressing the unreliability of the senses?
HERMES: I was correcting your description of the quest for knowledge as striving to ‘see beyond what is easy to see’.
SOCRATES: I meant that metaphorically: ‘see’ in the sense of ‘understand’.
HERMES: Yes. Nevertheless, you have conceded that even those things that you thought were the easiest to see literally are in fact not easy to see at all without prior knowledge about them. In fact nothing is easy to see without prior knowledge. All knowledge of the world is hard to come by. Moreover –
> SOCRATES: Moreover, it follows that we do not come by it through seeing. It does not flow into us through our senses.
HERMES: Exactly.
SOCRATES: Yet you say that objective knowledge is attainable. So, if it does not come to us through the senses, where it does come from?
HERMES: Suppose I were to tell you that all knowledge comes from persuasion.
SOCRATES: Persuasion again! Well, I would reply – with all due respect – that that makes no sense. Whoever persuades me of something must first have discovered it himself, so in such a case the relevant issue is where his knowledge came from –
HERMES: Quite right, unless –
SOCRATES: And, in any case, when I learn something through persuasion, it is coming to me via my senses.
HERMES: No, there you are mistaken. It only seems that way to you.
SOCRATES: What?
HERMES: Well, you are learning things from me now, aren’t you? Are they coming to you through your senses?
SOCRATES: Yes, of course they are. Oh – no they’re not. But that is only because you, a supernatural being, are bypassing my senses and sending me knowledge in a dream.
HERMES: Am I?
SOCRATES: I thought you said you’re not here to play debating tricks! Are you denying your own existence now? When sophists do that, I usually take them at their word and stop arguing with them.
HERMES: A policy that again bespeaks your wisdom, Socrates. But I have not denied my existence. I was only questioning what difference it makes whether I am real or not. Would it make you change your mind about anything that you have learned about epistemology during this conversation?
SOCRATES: Perhaps not . . .
HERMES: Perhaps not? Come now, Socrates, you were boasting earlier that you and your fellow citizens are always open to persuasion.
SOCRATES: Yes, I see.
HERMES: Now, if I am only a figment of your imagination, then who has persuaded you?
SOCRATES: Presumably I myself – unless this dream is coming neither from you nor from within myself, but from some other source . . .
The Beginning of Infinity Page 28
